Preferential orientation of magnetization and interfacial disorder in Co/Au multilayers

Two families of Co/Au multilayer films with different interlayer magnetostatic coupling were grown by the DC magnetron sputtering technique. The structure of these films was analyzed by X-ray diffraction (XRD), and the magnetic properties by vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM) and ferromagnetic resonance (FMR) spectroscopy. All these techniques give complementary information about the structure of the multilayers and the magnetization direction as a function of thickness of the Co layers. The structural analysis shows a decrease of the interfacial disorder for increasing Co layer thickness in both groups of samples. This behavior has been correlated with a transition of the magnetization direction from perpendicular to parallel to the films plane. Thin Co layer samples gave high remnant magnetization with very low saturation field while thick Co layer samples showed low remnant magnetization with high value of saturation field. In the FMR study, the spectra showed two resonance modes, which were associated to the internal and interfacial Co atoms. Volume (K_v) and surface (K_s) anisotropy constants were deduced from the FMR experiments and are in good agreement with the reported values for Co/Au multilayers.